July 28, 2010

After all what has any orange, whole or halved, to do with
emotional abuse?

Not a lot.

But think book titles, specifically: “Meeting Your Half-Orange”, by Amy Spencer. The half-orange is a translation of the Spanish phrasemi
media naranja, which means “my
half-orange”; use to describe, in love, one’s sweetheart, one’s beautifully
perfect other half.

Now, what’s a book about
meeting your half-orange, from Dating Optimist Amy Spencer, possibly got to do with
where you are now in your life?

The fact that you are
reading this blog tends to suggest that you have been struggling to transform
the very sour half-lemon in your life into a half-orange, and failing
miserably.

It’s not surprising.And it’s not your fault.

For two reasons.First, as you already know to your cost, there
are no magic wands; and lemons don’t turn into oranges.Second, ‘your’ half-lemon is very happy to
be a half-lemon; he enjoys being so sour as to be thoroughly unpleasant.

You want sweetness in
your life; all he ever offers you is sourness.Because that is all he wants you to have.

(Of course, there were
the few good times at the start of the relationship, but those were just to
grab your attention and get you hooked on him.)

Dating is probably the
last thing on your mind right now.And rightly
so.You have every reason to fear
meeting another half-lemon – until you can grasp all that is fantastic and
valuable about you.

“Meeting Your Half-Orange”
has a great message for you.The
message is about who you need to be – and can be – in order to have a happy
life.Amy Spencer argues that in order
to meet a great partner, you need to be the vibrant, fantastic person that you
really are.

Now, I have a fair idea
of the kind of things your abusive half-lemon has said about you. (My half-lemon said the same things, give or take a bit, to me.) They weren’t complimentary.And they are certainly not true.It’s just a fact that a sour person will say
sour things – that’s an integral part of his job description.(And how he loves that job
description!)

You don’t need to think
about dating, to start to upgrade the view you have of yourself. Amy Spencer provides you with some great tools
to discover how fantastic you really are.

Your abusive partner had
a vested interest in turning you into the shadow of a person.That is what it takes for him to feel
worthwhile and important.But you don’t
have to go there.

Let go of his vision of
you.

Reclaim who you are.Amy Spencer
can give you some fantastic pointers to do just that.

Whether or not you are
ever going to want to meet your half-orange, you owe it to yourself to become
the sweet, juicy, perfectly lovable person you truly are.

July 27, 2010

I just had to read Lori
Gottlieb’s “Mr Good Enough”. From what the press had said about it, before it was published, it sounded
like a book I would loathe. In reality, I do not.

The title may sound controversial, but the book is very valuable. It has the kind of message that you may, initially, want to argue with - or, at least, I did. But then I found myself increasingly convinced and impressed by it.

Yes, there is a note of self-pity
in the book, but Gottlieb incorporates a number of useful observations from
relationship experts.

She notes that having common
interests is far less valuable than sharing values and aspirations about the
kind of life you want to create together.

What struck me most powerfully was
one expert she quotes who says that the qualities, in a man, that bode
well for a long and happy marriage are selflessness and
humility.

Contrast selflessness and humility
for a moment, if you will, with the characteristics your abusive partner brought
to the table.

We both know that there was plenty
of selflessness and humility in your relationship.

And we both know that it was all
very one-sided; your side.

Quite possibly, like a woman I was
working with today, you had not considered that selflessness and humility could
be masculine qualities also.

Why not?

When I mentioned to my client that
masculine selflessness and humility are qualities that nurture a loving,
enduring relationship, at first, she struggled to grasp that idea. Then she
said, referring to my last ezine: “Like the man who went out of his way to bring
his wife a latte?”

Precisely so.

By now, you may be wondering how
masculine selflessness and humility can nurture a wonderful relationship, when
your selflessness and humility never managed it.

The answer has two distinct
strands to it. First, Gottlieb describes a world of functional men and
picky, more or less functional women.

You, and I, were decidedly
less picky than we might have been. Also, we did not find a partner in
that world, but in the zoo, at the edge of that world. Second, selflessness and
humility do not have to indicate a lack of critical faculties, as they did in
your case and mine.

I am all in favour of selflessness
and humility. In fact, I am at least as much in favour of being the recipient
of selflessness and humility as I am in favour of bestowing it on others. When
selflessness and humility are reciprocal and spontaneous they are truly
wonderful things.

And, there again, reciprocity
(like spontaneity) is predictably absent from the skewed world of abusive
relationships.

But how, you might ask, is it
possible to be selfless and humble without turning into a doormat?

Humility and selflessness are
precious gifts to bring to a relationship. They are also gifts that
have to be earned; gifts that are only to be bestowed on people who have
proved that they are worthy of them.

Your abusive partner proved, time
and time again, that he was not worthy of the gifts you brought to the
relationship. Yet, you continued to lavish them on him. And, in his hands,
they turned to dross. (But then, most things turned to dross in his
hands.)

Gottlieb suggests that single
women in their 30s and 40s have set the bar too high. My guess is that her
thesis is very much coloured by her own experience; not that it really matters
here.

What I would argue is that abused
women have two bars: one that you set way too high for yourself; and another
that you set way too low for a partner.

The fact that you are reading this
now means that you have served your time and your days of struggling with high
bars are over.

July 20, 2010

When my first book was published, some fifteen years ago, it
didn’t mean much to me… At least, until I held a copy of it in my hand.

Why was that?

It was never going to be a book that would set the world
alight; I knew that.It was of interest
to, at most, some 300 people in the Whole world who shared my interest in an
obscure academic topic.

Holding that book in my hand, and seeing my name on the
cover, gave me something I didn’t already have: it put me on my own mental map
of the world.

At the time, I had a young child, so I was struggling with a
severe case of “mummy identity”.But,
more importantly, being in an abusive relationship had led me to be, at best, “a
bit player” in my abusive husband’s life; I was nothing in my own.

I had, more or less, fallen off my own radar.

Like all abused women.

As far as I was concerned, I was simply that unworthy being
who shuffled along in my husband’s shadow.

The book I held in my hand reminded me that I still
existed.

I wish I could say that it did more than that, but it did
not.Because that is what happens in an
abusive relationship: you disappear from your own map of the world.

You only have to listen to an abused woman.You only have to listen to yourself.

Look down far enough and you will eventually find yourself,
at the very bottom of the heap: the Woman Who Believed She Didn’t Matter.

The Woman Who Did Not Matter To Herself - Because She Did
Not Matter To Her Abusive Partner.

It would be terribly, terribly sad – I’ve no doubt
that you have experienced it as being terribly sad – were it not for one thing:

Your partner does not have the power to decide whether or
not you matter.

Only you have that power.

Until now, there has been a problem – let’s call it a ‘belief
malfunction’: nobody taught you to believe you had that power, so you never
learned that you had it. You didn’t know even that you were allowed
to have that power.That is why you
haven’t been able to claim it for yourself.

Yet.

Your first experiences of not mattering – or not mattering
as much as you would have liked – came when you were a child, did they
not?Naturally enough, that young You
did what all children do, and generalized.The child could not say to herself: “This adult is too focused on their
agenda to be sensitive to my needs.The
fact that they have prioritized their agenda is all about them.It is not a reflection of my worth.”

Honestly, has there ever been a time when you have
been so hard pressed that you have given your children (or friends), a lower
priority than you might have wished?

When you were a child, that adult (those adults) did not put
you center stage, for their own reasons.But there is nothing to stop you now.

You can start to put yourself center stage now.

How do you do it?

Don’t even attempt to do it the hard way; that is, by
getting out there and trying to do something that is so foreign to you.Instead, start running a new scenario in
your head.Go back, if you like to when
that young You did not feel she mattered.

When you get to the point at which she is overlooked, change
the scenario.Have her successfully
attract the adult’s attention.If
necessary, have her explain to the adult why this so important to her, and make
sure that the adult understands, and responds appropriately.

See that she gets her needs met.See how good it feels for her.

Do that several times.In fact, do it as often as you feel like doing it.You can do it with several different
scenarios, if you like.

That’s all you need to do.

The worst that can happen, is that you have spent time
daydreaming in a more constructive way than you do when you focus on old hurts,
or making someone listen to you in the here and now.

That’s the worst that can happen.More likely, you will start to make a mental shift without even
being aware of it.

July 19, 2010

When you are in it, it’s almost impossible to do so.Because being in an emotionally abusive
relationship is like being in a maze: all you can do is go up different paths,
which almost always turn out to be dead ends.You lack on overview; not least because your abusive partner is intent
on closing down your horizons, and creating a kind of tunnel vision in which
all you see is him.

Boy, that works well for him!

So, the first sign of emotional abuse is the
obsessive way that you focus on your partner.Sure, in the early infatuation period of healthy relationships you will
spend a lot of time dreaming about your new partner; but then thoughts of
your partner, and what you share, make you very happy.They do not eat away at you.

The second sign of emotional abuse is constantly feeling you have to walk on eggshells. You become fearful of your partner’s
reactions.You find yourself constantly
watching his face for the first signs of anger.Your heart sinks when you hear his key in the front door.You spend most of your waking hours – and not
just your waking hours, either - worrying about what he might say to you.But it doesn’t end there.There is an inevitable spillover effect...

The third sign of emotional abuse is that you go from
being terrified of his judgement to fearing everyone’s judgement.You come to believe that he is the
mouthpiece for the whole World.He more
or less tells you – often he does tell you, in so many words – that ‘the
whole World’ judges you as he does.(Although,
when you stop to think about it, it’s difficult to imagine how someone as
self-obsessed as he is, could possibly be sensitive to what everyone else is
thinking.)

The fourth sign of emotional abuse is your isolation.
Of course, it is hardly surprising that
you become estranged from the world outside your abusive relationship; once you
accept his truth that everyone you encounter judges you and finds you
sorely wanting.

The fifth sign of emotional abuse is your increasing de-personalization.Not only does the world outside your
abusive relationship seem less real and important, but you also find yourself
shrinking as a person; and connecting less and less with other people,
in any meaningful way.

The sixth sign of emotional abuse is your increasing
dependency on your partner.Abused
women stop driving, and stop doing all sorts of normal adult activities on
their own, including, going to the cinema, or restaurant, or taking a flight,
alone.They function more like small,
frightened children than adult women.

The seventh sign of emotional abuse is emotional shut
down.There is defensiveness – which is
a fairly normal response to being constantly under attack – and there is emotional
shut down.Abused women, and I was
certainly one of them, often feel emotionally numb, or even dead.You can easily come across as withdrawn and
curiously emotionless, because you no longer know how to communicate
emotionally.

The eighth sign of emotional abuse is a perception of
living in a very unsafe world.Because your
abusive relationship is so unsafe – emotionally, and often physically, also –
you inevitably generalize and see the world as unsafe.The world you live in is unsafe.When you are in that place in your life, it
is as if you have a big ‘V’, for victim, painted on your forehead: every abuser
for miles around seems to find you.(I
can remember a day when I was very vulnerable and had a plumbing emergency:
even the plumber engaged with me in a very aggressive, abusive way.)

The ninth sign of abuse is an overwhelming sense of
worthlessness.Your partner has told
you how worthless you are more times than you have had hot dinners, and you
have argued with him.But still, you
ended up taking his judgement on board.

The tenth sign of abuse is your self-loathing.Again, your abusive partner has treated you
as if you were loathsome, and you have swallowed that judgement also.

The eleventh sign of abuse is self-blame.As a general principle, whatever happens,
you blame yourself…When things
go wrong, you assume that it’s your fault – as your abusive partner endlessly tells
you it is.(When was the last time
he said to you:“Don’t worry about it.It’s not your fault.That was
entirely down to me”? Enough said.)

The twelfth sign of abuse is catastrophizing.There is no such thing as a small
mistake when you are in an abusive relationship.Everything is a ‘hanging offence’: socks not neatly paired in the
sock drawer, dinner not waiting on the table, talking to a friend, making an
innocent remark, interrupting the great man when he is talking, you do it –whatever
it is – and it will be a heinous crime.

The thirteenth sign of abuse is your negativity or,
if you prefer, extreme pessimism.Not
that it feels that way to you; to you, you just ‘see things the way they are’.(In reality, you see things through a very
dark lens; his lens.)Your
world looks hopeless.Your future looks
hopeless.Nothing good will ever happen
to you again, in your whole life.You
may fight like a tiger to ensure that good things happen to your children, but
you, personally, live in a parallel universe where only bad things happen.

The fourteenth sign of abuse is that you have stopped
laughing.You certainly don’t laugh
when you are around your abusive partner; your laughter does not meet
with his approval.You have long
since stopped being light-hearted.How
could it be otherwise?Your heart stores
the full load of all the abusive things he has ever said and done.

Abused women, invariably, lose sight of the person they were
before they went into their abusive relationship.They think that younger, vibrant self is dead.

That’s not true.

You may show all the signs of abuse right now.But here’s the thing:

The signs of abuse are what you have suffered: they are
not who you are.

They are simply the trauma that, for the time being,
has submerged who you truly are.That
trauma may have dimmed your light, but it cannot extinguish it.It is very hard, unbearably hard, living
the way you are living now.But there
is a fast track to healing.

If
you take one thing from this article, let it be this: you are not the trauma
that has been inflicted on you.You deserve
so much more than the misery of an abusive relationship.

July 17, 2010

Have you ever had one of those conversations with an outwardly
successful person, who turns out to have had a string of disasters in
their background?

At a networking event, I got talking to a colleague who I had previously
avoided. He told me about his extraordinarily difficult family
heritage, and how close he had come to jumping off a tall building. He
also said that he had been programmed to be emotionally abusive like his
father before him, until NLP had enabled him to ‘break the chain’.

And, in case you are thinking that NLP might ‘save’ your own abusive
partner, or ex-partner, it’s not that simple. Roger (not his real name)
changed because he had reached a pitch of agony that he could no longer
abide. He truly wanted to ‘break that chain’, and he was prepared to do
it, for himself, and by himself; for the benefit of his children.

I shared with him my passion for breaking the chain, or the mold, of
abuse, and doing my part to prevent emotional abuse continuing on down
the generations.

Every woman who breaks that chain massively increases the sum of
happiness and freedom in her own life. She increases it also in the
lives of her children. Since children learn what they live, it cannot
be otherwise.

Roger told me that when his father died, his stepmother’s floral tribute
bore the words: “Peace at last, my darling…”

Now, in true abused woman style, Roger’s stepmother had stood by her
husband, to the last, and believed that she loved him. In writing that
card, she probably had intended to say that he was at peace at
last. In reality, it was at least as true of her: she had found a
peace that she would never have had while her husband was alive.

Roger said she now looks a good 10 years younger, and at 73 is happy and
confident to drive again. While her husband was alive, she had not felt
confident to drive for years - or have a life, worthy of the name - for
herself. Like all abusers, her abusive ‘darling’ had completely sapped
her confidence and self-worth, over the years.

When will you have ‘peace at last’?

Are you willing to wait until death provides that peace? If, indeed, it
does.

How much longer are you willing to delay bringing that peace into your
life.

“Ah, but”, you might say, “it’s different in my case. My abusive
partner has moved on. He has got himself another partner, and another
life. He is happy, now. And I can’t get him out of my head.”

Why would you keep him in your head?

Why would his judgements, and his negativity, still corrode your
self-esteem, like acid?

It happens because you believe that you are powerless to change
that.

Is it true?

If you believe it is true for you, then it must be.

But does it have to be that way?

Not at all.

So what actually happens?

You don’t need me to tell you that children are brilliant at pushing
your buttons. So, too are abusive men. It makes sense, when you stop
to think about it. In their ‘intimate’ relationships, abusive men are,
quite simply, attention-seeking children. Albeit with a breathtaking
dose of nastiness thrown into the mix. When they ‘push your buttons’
they are, in fact, tapping into your childhood vulnerabilities, your
unresolved hurts and shame.

They are brilliant at activating the anxious, disempowered child within
you. They do this to disorient and disempower the competent adult that
you have become. In time, with enough input from an abusive man, it’s
easy to forget that you are a competent adult. It’s easy to
believe that you are the pitiful creature an abusive partner says you
are; precisely because his words confirm the child’s tendency to feel
hopeless and helpless.

Abusive men have a rare gift for activating the child’s tendency to
catastrophize, that is, to interpret everything from the standpoint of
despair.

In short, they have a genius for rubbing salt in old wounds. This
enables them to open up new ones also.

Most probably, those wounds will remain open until you close them.

And you have the power to do that, if you will only believe that
you have.

When will you consign your abusive partner, and those old beliefs, to
the scrapheap where they deserve to be?

They deserve to be on the scrapheap. You do not.

And yet, by confusing his words with your reality, you have
believed, and treated yourself, as if you deserved to be on the
scrapheap.

Please, please,
take charge of your life. Do not be like Roger’s stepmother and wait
for “peace at last” to come to you – if indeed it does – the slow, hard
way.

June 21, 2010

I’ve worked with many abused women who want to be
free of their emotionally abusive partner, or ex-partner, and yet can’t quite let go.

From a logical standpoint it makes no sense at all.But why should it?

One abused woman’s words sum up the problem perfectly:

“What is that part of me
that endlessly holds out the hope that he has grown and won’t be a jerk?”

Now, she is not even with
her abusive partner any more, nor has she been for quite a while.Yet the hope persists.

Or, perhaps, more correctly,
it is the habit; the habit of still seeing this abusive man as somehow playing
a central role in her life.

Why does this happen?

Or, perhaps, more correctly,
it is the habit; the habit of still seeing this abusive man as somehow playing
a central role in her life.

There are lots of possible
answers.It could have to do with not
really holding the centre of her own world for herself.Or it could have to do with still according
him a power and authority that he never deserved.

In the end, the only
important thing is that, for whatever reason, women who cannot quite let go are
still enmeshed.And, because they are
still enmeshed, they still look to their abusive partner to free them.

If he will stop calling, or
doing whatever it is he does to remind her that his hooks still bite into her
flesh, then she will be free.

But that is exactly what he
is unlikely to do.

For as long as he can still
have his bit of fun tugging on those hooks, he will continue to do so.It goes with the territory.

When my divorce from my
abusive husband finally came through, I wanted closure.(Prior to that point, I had done at least
my fair share of mentally asking him how could he?)But I had a strong sense that I needed to
sever the line of communication – on my side at least.

I sent him a carefully
crafted letter telling him that the connection between us was completely at an
end.

Being really quite astute,
as most abusive men are, he sensed that I meant it.Over the years, he has engaged in a little low level provocation
and he has bided his time waiting, and plotting the day when he would…I’m not even sure what: get his revenge,
strike me hard, or whatever.As he said
to one of our very few mutual friends: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Please understand that I am
not suggesting that he has spent all his time plotting my comeuppance; I’m sure
he hasn’t.But it has been a nice idea
for him to play with – he doesn’t have a problem with the notion that revenge
is a dish best served cold - and the time finally came when he could twist the
knife.

What does all this mean in
practical terms?

It means that he has been
instrumental in creating a rift with someone that I love – it also means that
that person has their own share of responsibility also; as do I.

So where am I going with
this?

When this rift started I
made a conscious decision that I was not going to be drawn back into any of the
old stuff, including Poor Me Syndrome.We can ascribe whatever meaning we choose to what happens to us. I chose
to believe that there was a gift in the situation, I simply had to find it.

I had a vision of my
ex-husband standing with the end of a cord in his hand, jerking it very hard,
because he believed that the other end was tied firmly round my throat.

I don’t have to tell you
that the other end was once tied round my throat, in the same way
that it may well have been tied around yours.

No way was I going to pick
up ‘my’ end of that cord.

That would have been
suicide.

You cannot just pick up
‘your’ end of that cord, and hope it will stay inert in your hand.It will coil itself around your throat, or
whichever part of your anatomy it was ever attached to – or may still be
attached to.

You have only to touch that
cord for it to develop a life of its own – a life that is intent on squeezing
the life out of you.

As I write this, I am aware
just how dramatic it sounds.But is it
far fetched, or is it accurate?

And if you feel it is
accurate, then isn’t it time you cut the cord in your own life, once and for
all.

June 06, 2010

Nobody ever deserves to get
hooked into an abusive relationship, but that is exactly what does
happen to a lot of us. In fact, the statistics suggest that 1 in 4
women will undergo domestic violence – and that probably doesn’t include
those of us who “only” suffer mental and emotional abuse.

So why does it happen?

Why does it happen, even in
these relatively ‘enlightened times’? And why
does it happen to the rich and famous no less than to anyone else.

Secret #1 It doesn’t just happen; it comes
about for a reason. We become abused women, and learn to settle
for an abusive relationship because we were taught to settle for less.
Mostly, we were taught by parents, or other carers, to settle for:

Less love

Less respect

Less care

Less consideration

Less support

Less encouragement

than we wanted or needed. Nobody’s suggesting that we liked it, or that we
wanted it, but – usually at a young age - we were programmed to expect that that
was all we would get, and so we internalized that. It was never your fault,
you were programmed to have an Achilles heel that you didn’t even know you had.

Secret #2 We become awfully good at denial. Well, you would, wouldn’t
you? When you learn that you are not that important, and you don’t matter that
much, it becomes second nature to blame yourself for whatever happens, does it
not? Especially when everyone else is in the habit of blaming you. You accept
that everything that happens is your fault.

(Do you remember The 3 Wise Monkeys, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No
Evil? According to Wikipedia there could be a fourth one also: Do No Evil.
And, according to Annie, there should be a fifth one: Live No Evil. What I mean
by that is never, ever, resign yourself to live with the evil, negative
projections that a loved one foists on you. When someone tells you that you are
most kinds of awful and you swallow it, you are living their evil. Don’t
do it. They’re wrong.)

Secret #3 Always, always let an abusive man off the hook. Collude with him in
accepting that he is never accountable for his actions. You made him do it –
whatever it happens to be at the time.

Secret #4 If you keep on throwing love at an abusive man, he’s bound to improve one
day. Isn’t he? Your love is the alchemy that will one day turn
his dross into gold. Or, if you prefer, just keep waving your magic wand as
hard as you can and, some day, the magic is bound to work (if your arm
doesn’t drop off from exhaustion first). The best case scenario is
that one day, you will finally have some power and influence that lasts longer
than 5 minutes, in the relationship…

So sorry to dispel another hope, but it really doesn’t work like that. You know
how the more you do for other people, the less they bother to do for
themselves? Well that is the way it works. Why, on earth, would he
bother to work at the relationship, when he can leave that stuff to you?

Secret #5 Make sure you have a really, really skewed idea of the World.
He is wonderful, and you are awful. Now, this one is a little
counter-intuitive, but you’ll probably understand it anyway. Most of the time
he acts like a complete jerk. Yet that doesn’t stop you believing that he is
wonderful, and lovable, and his behaviour is all your fault, anyway.
You, on the other hand, do everything you possibly can to be loving, caring,
understanding, and supportive, and keep the peace, yet, all the time, you are
vile, and horrible, and nobody else would ever want you. (Doubtless because
you are too loving, caring, understanding and supportive…)

WHOA! Reality check, please! If it looks like a jerk, talks like a
jerk, and acts like a jerk, there is a good, O-B-V-I-O-U-S reason for
that: it’s a jerk. Every single jerk, since the beginning of time, has come
with a guarantee, written in large print, across his forehead, which, curiously
enough, nobody ever bothers to read, or heed, at the start. It reads:
“This jerk is guaranteed to make you as unhappy as you have ever been in your
entire life. He will never change or improve to make you happy.” Enough said.

Secret #6 Always, always focus on him. It’s all about him, isn’t it?
You are so convinced that he needs to change, that he is perfectible, and
a fine human being whose light is largely hidden by a dung heap, that you
completely and utterly disregard yourself. You’ll be happy, when he…
You’ll be able to grow and thrive emotionally, when he… You’ll defer
having any good feelings, until you can bestow them on him first.

Think about it for a moment: abusive men don’t do selflessness, and they
certainly don’t defer gratification. They want their emotional pay-offs and
they want them now, toddler style. If having warm, fuzzy, loving
feelings mattered to them, if being happy mattered to them, they would
have focused their energies in that direction, instead of the eternal rant of
dissatisfaction.

Secret #7 Let him take control of the relationship from the first minute.
You may not like the way he does things – in fact, you probably won’t – but
let him know that you are prepared to accept whatever he dishes out,
regardless. Ignore everything you see that you don’t like. If you prefer, you
could ask him to change and take your wishes into account. But then, when he
fails to do so, back down. He’ll be fine with that, although he might have a
temper tantrum. You probably won’t be as comfortable with that, but that is not
important, is it? (See Secret #6 above.)

Now you know the 7 Secrets to creating an abusive relationship. Hopefully,
bringing them to your attention in a slightly brutal way will help protect you
for the future.

The next step is all about learning how to do things dramatically differently,
so that, when you are ready, you can create the great relationship you desire.

June 03, 2010

I was at a dinner party where the hostess was full
of righteous indignation.Her next door
neighbour had left a violent husband – the episode leading to her departure had
been the talk of the very genteel street.Now they were back together, playing ‘happily ever after’.

“Hasn’t she got any self-respect?” my hostess
snapped.(Underpinning her indignation
was a belief that ‘things like that don’t happen in streets like this, to
people like us’.)

I carefully sheathed my claws and replied, as
neutrally as I could:

“You know, it is not quite that simple.”

My hostess, who is blessed with a very happy marriage,
interrupted, warming to her theme.“How
could she let anyone…?I would never…
Blah!Blah!Blah!”

I can remember saying the same thing myself; and really
believing it.

In fact, I actually said it to my mentally abusive
husband.

And I didn’t have the slightest idea of the irony of it!

I said as much to my hostess, who was still firmly astraddle
her high horse, and wasn’t budging.

So, I explained to her that most times we don’t recognize
abuse, for a couple of very good reasons:

First,
because domestic abuse is incremental.Abusers, generally, start in a small way, get compliance, and then
up the ante every time, so they ‘break you in’ – relatively -
gently.(Think, if you will, of
the school of thought that suggests starting a lobster in a pan of cold
water, and gradually bringing it up to the boil.)

Second,
we were probably pre-programmed to accept abuse.

I can’t tell you how many times an abused woman has expressed
disbelief that a partner could be violent towards her; and grown up with
a violent parent.Or else, she has been
stunned that a partner could ‘speak to her that way’, when one, or both,
parents ‘groomed’ her, by the way they treated her.

My hostess huffed and puffed a bit, and then said: “Well, I
would never…”

In my most polite, British way, I pointed out to her that she
had grown up with parents who were loving, supportive and indulgent of
her.She agreed.She wasn’t convinced, but she had the
good grace to agree.

But the story does not end there.

A couple of days later, I had a call from a client who I
have worked with for some time, first individually, and then through the
Healing Journey Teleclass Program.She
said she had some exciting news.

This client, I’ll call her Mary, has spent 7 years trying to
make an abusive relationship work.Mary
was pretty good at:

Self-blame

Making
excuses

Denial

Overlooking
the evidence

Giving
her partner one last chance after another

Settling
for crumbs

Misplaced
forgiveness

You know the behaviours as well as I do.

Mary’s ‘story’ was that she was addicted, and could not let
go of this man.Most abused women have
a touch of the limpet about them – do we not? – but Mary was in a class
of her own.Still, I did not buy the
‘addiction’ story.It’s a great line to
get you off the hook.Mary’s argument
was, basically, one of diminished responsibility, because of her addiction.

All the work we did individually, and in the teleprogram,
never seemed to develop strong roots.

And then she made an appointment to speak to me.Boy, did she sound excited.

She told me a tale of her partner reverting to his usual
(unlovable) behaviours.True to form,
he started attacking her about her children.Then he said he couldn’t take her somewhere nice for dinner, because
of her shoes.And then he threw
a spectacular – but not uncharacteristic – tantrum.

And Mary walked away, once and for all.

“Why?”You
might ask.“What was different this
time?”

What was different was that she finally understood – at all
levels of her being - that this man was abusive; and she is not prepared to
accept abusive behavior.

It reminded me of how my own marriage ended.As soon as someone, whose opinion I could
not dispute, told me that my marriage was abusive, the decision to leave was
easy.

I’ve worked with many, many women who have put up with
extraordinarily bad treatment from their partner, and managed to excuse
it.Either the poor little poppet had a
hard time as a child, or he was stressed at work, or it was the drink, or it
was her fault, or he had ‘so much potential’, or whatever.

As long as it was purely an interpersonal thing – a difficulty
in the relationship – it was possible to stay and work it out.

Once the cold, hard, ugly judgement of abuse kicked in, it
became a whole different ball game.

And, strange to say – or not – self-respect kicked in.

So I do not share my hostess’s opinion about a lack of
self-respect.

I believe that something different occurs in abusive
relationships.I believe our needs,
wants, dignity, personality, and sense of self, all become increasingly
compressed, by an abusive man, into the smallest possible space.

We lose sight of them in the struggle for survival.

We try so hard to accommodate to our abusive partner’s whims,
wishes, and demands that we completely lose sight of ourselves.

When that happens we respond from an entirely different
place, from a strength and a clarity we didn’t even know we had.

So, in answer to my hostess – who will not be reading
this:Yes, we do have our self-respect,
it never leaves us.Compressed though
it may be, it remains, and one day something will trigger it and cause it to
unfurl.

Bring it on!

And what of Mary now?

Well, like all abused women Mary is a tryer.She is not prepared to give up, even for a
while – as I would like her to – on the search for a relationship.Happily, she sees the need to learn how to
do a relationship very, very differently, from a place of enlightenment, and
personal power.

She will be joining my 7 Secrets to Successful Relationships
teleprogram
also.

My ex-husband was the Professional Variety, your partner
may have been the Business Variety, the Unemployed Variety, the Tolerable When
Sober Variety, the Pillar of the Church Variety, the Silver-Tongued Variety,
the He’s Had It So Hard Variety, or the Beast You Think Might Turn Into A
Prince Variety – to name just a few.

But here’s the thing: they are all Abusive Men 57
products.

They have a limited shelf-life.

You have resolutely refused to take into account their
expiration date.

How can you read their expiration date?

Simple really.By
the time that they have treated you badly 3 times, and failed to take your
feelings into account, they have passed their expiration date.Period.

And that’s being conservative.

Keep them in your cupboard and they will continue to
deteriorate until they eventually explode.It is only a matter of time when that happens.

They are seriously bad for your health.

So, here’s the thing: the kind of cans you have had in
your cupboard, is not a reflection on you.It is purely an indication that at one time you purchased a poor
quality product.Haven’t we all
done that at one time or another?

The abusive man that you have allowed into your life is,
similarly, not a reflection on you. His awfulness is entirely his own.

It is all about him. His vile behavior is not about you, at all.

Sure, you have a responsibility for giving an abusive man
shelf space in the first place. But you didn’t create him.(Not even if he swears blind that you did!)

And you learned the hard way. You made mistakes, because you did not know that being trusting and
more focused on other people than yourself left you terribly, terribly vulnerable.

But you know what?

You’ve paid, in full, for your mistakes. You’ve done the time, suffered massively,
tried everything you possibly could to make amends, and your good behaviour has not
been taken into account.

Time to give yourself a full pardon.

And, why not learn all the lessons from your mistakes, just
so that you don’t risk making the same ones in the future?

Besides, why on earth would you settle for Abusive Men 57?

Why settle for slimy canned
gloop, when there is so much good fresh food around with which to nurture body
and soul?

May 18, 2010

There is a theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become
truly expert at something.

This theory is explained, very persuasively, by Malcolm
Gladwell in his book, “Outliers”.

Gladwell argues that there are two main components to
becoming outstandingly good in any sphere:

Being
in the right place, at the right time

Putting
in 10,000 hours.

How does this relate to emotional abuse, and domestic
violence in general?

First, let’s get some perspective on this: when Gladwell
talks about getting 10,000 hours in computer programming, playing a sport, or
any of the other things he talks about, 10,000 hours sounds like a lot of
hours.

Suppose you managed to do 8 of these hours per day, 5 days
per week, it would take you nearly 5 years to put in your 10,000 hours.

But it doesn’t work like that with abuse, does it?

Now nobody rushes into a mentally, emotionally abusive relationship to invest
an initial 10,000 hours- and then a
whole lot more – to become an expert in being emotionally abused.

Yet it happens, does it not?

In my own case, in the first year alone, the math
worked like this:

1
hour(the first token incident, to
test my compliance)

24
hours(the first full ‘test’
explosion)

72
hours(first full blown explosion)

2-3
hours daily for the first 3 months

5-6
hours over the next 9 months

1 x
72 hour block every 6 weeks

So, at a conservative estimate, in that first year
of my abusive relationship, I must have put approximately 2160 hours
into learning how to be an abused woman!

After that, the number of hours I committed just kept
escalating. (By the second year, I reckon the number probably doubled.)

My guess is that you too have committed a massive, monstrous number
of hours.Maybe it was less, maybe it
was considerably more.Either way, it
is a tragedy to have wasted so many hours feeling miserable about your relationship
with your partner.

When you think about it that way, it may just suggest to
you that an abusive relationship really has nowhere to go but down.

But there is more, of course.

First, Gladwell identifies another characteristic that
makes for an ‘Outlier’; and that is being in the right place at the right
time.

Like me, you were, doubtless, in the right place at the
right time, because you grew up in an environment that prequalified you
for an abusive relationship.

Perhaps the environment you grew up in was abusive;
you may have been emotionally neglected – and otherwise ill treated.Or you may just have been programmed
to be a total people-pleaser.

Either way, you were trained to be exceptionally receptive
to an abusive man.

So you, like me, were much more inclined than another
woman might be to put in those 10,000 hours (and many further
thousands as well).

Sadly, even that is not the end of it.

Your abusive partner also put in his 10,000 hour
‘apprenticeship’.

What am I saying here?

My abusive husband fully developed his abusive skills with
me.

Thinking back, he had had one prior serious relationship
in which his focus was to be accepted into his partner’s family.At that time, he aspired to integration into
the bosom of a family that was much more loving and supportive than his own.

(Further, his girlfriend’s father was the national head of
the professional association to which he belonged.)

For all that, the relationship didn’t work out.My future husband did not feel that this
girlfriend met enough of his needs.(Although, as he told it, he did not know exactly what those needs
were.)

By the time he met me, he wanted something different: he
wanted a woman who would be completely and utterly his creature.

His family ‘programming’ was certainly abusive.But because his father was the Alpha male
abuser, and brooked no competition, my future husband had not been able to put
all his learnt (abusive) skills into practice.

By the time he had completed his 10,000 hours with me, he
had become a very accomplished abusive man, in his own right.

It was never my fault.

But it was my responsibility inasmuch as - thanks
to my programming – I let him get away with it.

In exactly the same way that you let your partner get away
with it.

You may have fought, and remonstrated, and pleaded, and
threatened, but still…Either you
stayed, or you kept taking him back – which means that you let him get away
with it.

So, he put in his 10,000 hours, and so did you.

He became more and more expert at hurting, humiliating and
rejecting you.And you became more and
more expert at… what?

Shame

Humiliation

Self-loathing

Fear

Isolation

Numbness

Paralysis

And you sacrificed thousands and thousands – maybe even
tens of thousands - of hours of your precious life.

But there is an upside.

Who you are is not simply what you do.Or, at least, what you do does
not have to be all that you are.

Everyone, including abused women, has so many, many
talents.

Yes, you have got your 10,000 hours of emotional abuse –
and then some.But you also have other,
massive skills and achievements, if you will just focus on them.

As for your partner, well, he has got his 10,000 hours,
too.Probably many times over.

You can’t know what he will do with his extraordinary
expertise – and why on earth should you care, provided he stops blighting your
life?

But you can set about acquiring expertise about how to
have a happy life.

You’ve already proved that you are a very good learner
(although the things you have learnt have not always been those that are most
helpful to you).

Start accumulating your first 10,000 hours of
happiness.Remember, you can start as
small as you please.

Sure, 10,000 hours may sound daunting.But they need not be.That is only 416days and nights.

If you choose to make it your full time focus, instead of
your abusive partner, by July 2011, you will be in a very different place.

Even if you only do it for 2-3 hours a day, by this
time next year, you will be getting quite good at it.